The present invention relates to a processing method for OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and image enhancement, and in particular, to a software smoothing method.
A special hardware device is conventionally employed for the performance of OCR related processes. An example is an MCA (Micro Channel Architecture) option card, having a 68020 or a 68040 Motorola (TM) processor and associated memory which is employed to perform an image process, a smoothing process, and a pattern matching process.
At present, high speed CPUs are widely available at low prices, and OCR related processes can be performed using software only; special hardware is not required for such tasks. The merits of using software for OCR operations are that only a relatively small investment is required, and OCR functions can be easily and flexibly altered by the employment of new versions of software.
If only software is used to perform processes that have heretofore been hardware functions, there is a general reduction in processing speed accompanied by a drastic reduction in cost performance. If measures are taken to forcibly increase speed, they may be accompanied by a drop in the character recognition rate, the basic function originally demanded of OCR operations, and the occurrence of other problems. For example, a character to be scanned may be so small that a large corner appears when the size is normalized, and a correct outline can not be extracted when noise carried by one dot reflects in the vertical and horizontal directions.
It is very important in such cases that smoothing be performed in order to avoid the possibility that the character recognition rate will be reduced.